In Patricia Finn’s debut novel, The Golden Boy, Stafford Hopkins lives with his wife, Agnes, on Maui, Hawaii, in a secure, gated community. Their architecturally designed house has been covered in all the major magazines. Stafford and Agnes also have places in Aspen, Colorado; Los Angeles and Malibu, California; and New York City. Agnes agrees to live on Maui, only if Stafford agrees not to sell any of their other homes.
Stafford is in his late 50s. Agnes is in her early 50s. The great distress in their lives is around their daughter, Callie, who is in her mid-20s. Despite everything that money could buy, including a fine education, Callie has failed to launch. They tried, but neither Agnes nor Stafford knew much about parenting when they met in Ontario, Canada. Their better parenting instincts were always overruled by the prevailing winds of the people around them in Beverly Hills, California, where Stafford became a powerful studio executive.
When a letter arrives from Canada, naming Stafford the guardian of his best friend’s four grandchildren, he flies to Toronto, intending to set up financial care for the children he plans not to meet. Instead, memories drag him into a world that he thought he had left behind. It’s an extraordinary novel about the powers of friendship and the meaning and magic of TV in our lives.
Maureen Millea Smith is a retired librarian and an award-winning novelist.
